Guest Column -- Remembrances of first town parade

Wednesday

May 30, 2007 at 12:01 AMMay 30, 2007 at 12:39 AM

Two lines of identically colored red, white and blue flags first caught my eye as a youngster on Ocean Street in Marshfield one late spring day in the mid-1950s. They snapped in the cool, stiff breeze that swept up from the center of town and bracketed a street that was oddly empty of cars.

Gilbert W. Sanborn

A few minutes earlier, as we walked down from our house on New Street, right behind the high school, my mother had said we were going to the Memorial Day parade. I didn’t know what a parade was, or why the street was deserted, but my mother told me to just wait, I would understand in a few minutes. She told me that we would see bands and fire engines and marching soldiers.

As we stood waiting with other families on the sidewalk at the corner of Ocean Street and Main Street, I remember looking down the road, where my mother said I would first see the parade, and thinking how differently the street looked with those flags waving in the gusty winds. An ordinary street had become a majestic pathway.

After a few minutes, I began to hear thumping and tapping, the sound of drums in the distance. Trumpets soon pierced the air, followed by the drone of tubas and trombones. I couldn’t see the band at first, but as the crescendo intensified, I saw a lone individual rounding the bend carrying another red, white and blue flag in front of him — “an American flag,” my mother said. As he passed the spectators lining the route, some men standing along the sidewalks raised their right hands to their foreheads — a “salute.” Others held their hands over their hearts. My mother did the same and instructed me to follow.

The Marshfield High School band, in green uniforms with white trim, led the parade. Several carloads of town leaders passed, and the dignitaries waved to the families on the sidewalks. Groups of Scouts followed — Girl Scouts, Boy Scouts, Brownies and Cub Scouts — bumping shoulders, giggling and waving to parents, neighbors and classmates. The fire engines announced their presence with their old rotary sirens mounted on the fenders of the big red pumpers. The engines led a group of volunteer firemen, dressed in dark blue uniforms.

That first year, I didn’t recognize any of the older youths marching in the band or Scouts. But when a group of men in green, blue and gray uniforms, marched by, I did see men that I knew — men like Red Davis, a carpenter who lived a few houses down from us; Russ Pineo; John Nangle; Lloyd Frisbie; and others that worked around town. Each of them marched with their back straight, eyes forward, footsteps in tempo. Some of the men held rifles with their barrels set against their right shoulders, while others swung their arms forward and back in unison.

As the parade groups arrived at the intersection of Main Street where the parade terminated, each group filed down the steps into Memorial Park. We crossed over behind them and stood silently as the soldiers gathered behind the three men with rifles. Someone with a deep but soft voice spoke a few words, and people bowed their heads.

One soldier barked out a sharp command, and the soldiers with rifles pointed them skyward. The command of “Fire!” gave way to a thunderous roar from the weapons that caused me to jump. After two more commands and two more volleys, the soldiers shouldered their weapons and a cloud of bluish, acrid smoke settled over the group of spectators. Slowly, as the crowd disbursed, soldiers turned to each other and shook hands before they greeted family members.

As the years went by, we would go to the same spot every Memorial Day to watch the parade. Eventually, I made the trek with friends, but always to the same corner on Ocean and Main Street so I could cross over to Memorial Park to listen to the prayer and watch the honor guard fire its weapons. While each year had its memorable moments, none was quite so striking as that of my first year.

During my school years in Marshfield, I began to learn in social studies classes about the wars in which the soldiers, sailors and airmen of Marshfield and of hundreds of other towns across America had fought. Vietnam added men to the ranks of the servicemen marching during those years. When we learned one bleak winter day in the high school cafeteria of the death of Billy Coggeshall, a neighbor, the war, which I had only understood through the eyes and voices of TV newsmen, suddenly became very personal and emotional.

After graduation in 1968, I never attended another Memorial Day parade in Marshfield, but the impressions of that first parade have never left my memory. It has taken me a lifetime to understand and appreciate the sacrifices of the soldiers who passed by me on Ocean Street, as well as of those veterans of more recent conflicts in the parades I have watched as a parent with my own children in tow.

A tragic experience in 2001 set me on a path to give something back to the men and women of the military who grace us with their presence. At 8:46 on a warm, clear September morning, I was sitting in a conference room across from the World Trade Center when I heard a high pitched whine, followed by a violent shaking of the floor underneath me and an explosion on the other side of our building. The cause became clear a few minutes later when, as I was looking up at the burning North Tower and the people hanging from shattered windows, an enormous aircraft slammed into the South Tower, forcing a fireball and debris out the other side.

At that moment, I realized that I had witnessed a terrorist act. Amidst the chaos and confusion that followed, I had a feeling of dread as I watched a stream of rescue workers entering the burning towers while thousands of others and I headed away from the carnage. Minutes later, my fears were realized, as the first tower collapsed and snuffed out the lives of hundreds of emergency workers I had seen only moments before.

A week after that fateful day and again five years later, I wrote essays for our local paper on the need for each of us, as American citizens, to recognize and support the personnel who commit themselves to our safety in our town as well as the members of our military who put themselves in harm’s way far from our shores. Last year, after having previously adopted a soldier and then a platoon in Iraq, my family and I adopted a brigade, the 4,300 Soldier, 2nd Brigade Combat Team, the “Dagger Brigade” of the 1st Infantry Division that had just deployed to Iraq. We chose that brigade because of its overseas posting in Schweinfurt, Germany, where families of soldiers downrange in Iraq are far from the support and comfort of relatives, friends and community.

The relationship we have developed with the soldiers and families of the Dagger Brigade has been rich in its intensity, sometimes heartbreaking and always gratifying. It has taken us on a remarkable odyssey. My son and I walked the halls of Landstuhl Hospital in Germany, where we visited wounded soldiers who are brought directly from combat in the streets and fields of Iraq.

We celebrated a Winterfest party with the tight-knit community of wives, husbands, sons and daughters of soldiers who go about their daily lives in Schweinfurt while their loved ones face extraordinary dangers in Iraq. Through e-mails, letters and pictures, we share in the joys and sorrows of valiant men and women of the platoons we support in combat zones. And one early spring day on the hallowed grounds of Arlington National Cemetery, I attended the burial of Specialist Ross McGinnis, who smothered a grenade in his vehicle to save the lives of four other soldiers.

While I closely follow the course of the war and the political turmoil over its destiny, my focus since I began my involvement with the brigade has been on one simple mission — to respond positively to a question the wife of a soldier asked me in Schweinfurt, “Do people back in the States understand what we are going through?” The risks of service are enormous and the toll on family lives is extraordinary. Babies are born, first steps taken, sports awards won and students graduate while parents are thousands of miles away in combat zones. In some cases, those parents don’t return. Captain Anthony Palermo of Brockton was killed by an IED on April 6. His wife, Capt. Kristy Palermo, gave birth to their son, Marcus Anthony, a few days later.

I believe that each of us should try to have some positive impact in a small corner of this conflict and show these wonderful soldiers and dedicated families, some of whom I have come to know, that their commitment and sacrifices are recognized and appreciated by American citizens. We must appreciate two important facts. First, each soldier is a volunteer who has stepped up to defend our shores. Second, our soldiers don’t get to choose what wars they fight, yet we ask them to be available to protect us from any threat.

This coming Memorial Day, as I watch the bands, fire engines, Scouts and veterans of Weston march in our parade, I will think back to that day on Ocean Street in Marshfield when I first saw an American flag being carried down the center of the street and watched a band of noble citizen soldiers march by. And I and many others in Weston will say a special prayer for the safe return of those members of the Dagger Brigade, whom we have come to know directly and through e-mails and pictures, who answered the call of duty on our behalf.